The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: him as an unknown friend anxious to protect her. She thought of all
the circumstances in which the stranger had appeared, and put them
together, as if to find some ground for this comforting theory, and
felt inclined to credit him with good intentions rather than bad.
Forgetting the fright that he had given the pastry-cook, she walked on
with a firmer step through the upper end of the Faubourg Saint Martin;
and another half-hour's walk brought her to a house at the corner
where the road to the Barriere de Pantin turns off from the main
thoroughfare. Even at this day, the place is one of the least
frequented parts of Paris. The north wind sweeps over the Buttes-
Chaumont and Belleville, and whistles through the houses (the hovels
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet.
A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his
eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared
to move! What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his
wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early
sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down
the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all
had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new
disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear
ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand,
 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |